Ancient Corinth

Extract

The student of anniversaries who is not particular to a year or two will recall that some two thousand years ago this year Corinth was refounded by Julius Caesar, following its destruction a little more than a hundred years before by Mummius. ‘Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum’, said Horace, translating what seems to have been a Greek proverb. Whether or not this means that a merchant and his money were soon parted amid the less respectable joys of Corinth, it seems to turn on the wealth and luxury of what was once the second city of Greece: a city, despite the fact that she suffers in our ideas from having played second fiddle politically and culturally to Athens and Sparta, of exceptional importance in the history of Greece. Thus is justified an effort to outline her history on this anniversary occasion.